


Feint

by millyditty



Series: Reflection [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Fallout, M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Reichenbach, fighting as therapy, non-canon compliant mary morstan, sherlock just wants to axe you a question john, sort of, surprise ships!, too many issues to tag, written pre-S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:26:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millyditty/pseuds/millyditty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is quiet against him, and loose against him, and after some time he presses reverent words into John's shoulder, strokes a little at the skin of John's back and finally eases off into a startlingly deep sleep. So John swallows the words down, buries them. They can try to dig them out later. (Or how Mary decides to solve a personal problem by fiddling with another problem. Sherlock is upset. John tries to be nothing much at all. Not nearly as much fun as it might sound. First in a series.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feint

 

 

 

Feint  
John/Sherlock, assorted  
Canon through S2, only a few aspects from S3  
Notes: Here be serious issues dealing with mental illness, familial abuse and gender dynamics. Written by a nonBrit and not Britpicked, so if it's too awful move along. Author staying incognito for reasons of her own. Many many thanks to C (link to the lovely boy later) for some info that'll be used in later parts, and much love to my sister for putting up with my rambling texts about this stupid story for the last five or so months.

_Summary: Mary really does love John. Enough to want what's best for him even if she is using him._

-

 

The truth is this: Mary has been displeased (disappointed) for quite some time

(there are other truths, secrets that she slips between her lies to disguise them, and Sherlock sees it from the first time they are introduced, catches the reflection but not the original, and she smiles at John every time with such a soft and protective fierceness that Sherlock hates and envies and adores her for it all at once, and so Sherlock tamps it down, covers it, ignores because _John_ )

and she really does love John in her own way (even if he will never be her choice) and she only wants what's best for him and maybe, there between the fall and the push, she's half-convinced they'll have better luck together than she'd allowed herself to have.

 _Her_ truth, the first and the last lie, is this: she is simply tired of avoiding the inevitable.

 

* * *

 

Later as London feels muted and dimmed around him, as fear is crawling beneath his skin like multitudes of insects and _John_ is an aching loss that threatens to undo the last tatters that he has been reduced to—

“You do love him.”

“The way that I would love a spotter,” Mary agrees, and this at least makes more sense than what he has been struggling to understand since he'd returned. “He— is extraordinarily loyal, Sherlock, and I can't say that I've seen such commitment before in my life.”

“He feels,” he says before he thinks to speak, and her body does not react in the slightest— she only stands where she is in her warm coat, lacy shawl tucked comfortably about her throat, now-short hair smoothed back from her face— but her eyes change, soften oddly before they shutter, before they close her heart away and she hides herself so easily.

“Everybody does, I've found. Do you think—” A slight pause, something like shame lighting her face, crossing the smooth line of her jaw, “I wasn't _born_ like this, Sherlock.”

“You prefer to pretend that you were.”

As if he has any right to throw such a stone.

And once the words are spoken Sherlock can see her mind working through them, considering whether or not there's any reason to lie to him, if she should even waste their time— and he sees the moment when she decides there is not point, no reason.

“I thought once that I had found someone as cold as I had always wanted to be, someone to look... up to,” and her voice is thinning now, the words unable to stand beneath the fullness of her emotion. “It turns out that he was every bit as overcome by his heart as I am.”

It is the truth of her recent years in London, of the signs that he can read of her stress and of her fear, of _John_ that is darkening her heart as much as his— shadows beneath her eyes, tension in her neck, the fact that she has not dared to remove her hands from her coat.

To reveal the subtle promise of a tremble.

Mary, exposed by her heart, the pain of it more than even she can bear, is afraid for her friend.

It is the calmest that Sherlock has felt since John's been gone.

 

* * *

* * *

 

But right now: John is gone (is gone every morning now, buried so neatly into the work at the hospital) and Sherlock is left alone.

The nagging uncertainties had been proven, and so his thoughts thicken but do not solidify, the constant awareness never fully settling into the concrete states that he had shifted easily through for so many years Before. Now his thoughts shift and stir but do not focus, and yet he's grown used to it, the latest impossibility in a list that increases every day.

(“You'll want to eat before tonight,” John had said, not bothering to meet his eyes, and he'd been neatly dressed and composed before leaving his bedroom, hands buried in his pockets, set of his shoulders a challenge Sherlock pointedly refuses to answer.)

A handful of years (and seven months, a week and two days) has allowed Sherlock to ignore the frustrations of this new reality that he still chooses over the Between.

Because John's return to 221B had brought with it an impressive self-made prison.

His jackets no longer hang beside the door, his tea cups no longer sit for hours in the sink, the halfhearted typing (Sherlock is a rare mention on the blog now, John updating weekly at the most and acknowledging only day-to-day activities that mean nothing) reaches Sherlock's ears muted through the boundaries that separate them. When John joins him, he eats in the relative privacy of the kitchen space, his hip leaning back against the counter as he puts together a small meal, devours it, and cleans all evidence before disappearing again. The last few days have seen the doctor no longer using even the plate, instead eating his morning toast over the sink without shame or hesitation. Words instead of sentences, vague tight gestures across the room's distance, John carefully (pleasantly) balanced when they are home.

It is a stark contrast to their world when there is a case to be solved, questions for Sherlock to focus on and an outside action for John to react to, when they have an excuse to fit into their old roles as if nothing has happened, as if they had started where they had stopped.

John does not leave his side when they are out, is glued to Sherlock's hip from the moment they leave the flat together until they reach 221B however many hours or days it takes for the case to be finished. John is steady and stable beside him, never more than a breathe away, humor too quick and slanted in that new way that Sherlock accepts as the price but at least _there_ in the way that he had always been before.

 _There will be prices_ , he had decided once, and had accepted it then and accepts it now.

(“You'll want to eat before tonight,” John had said, not bothering to meet his eyes, and Sherlock had breathed calmly from his seat far on the other side of the room, remembering decisions, smothering and banking and urging down the Things as he stays where John has placed him with a silent and unforgiving order.)

A noise (John does not text like he used to) and Sherlock is only vaguely focused on the assortment of human ears spread before him but still pretends to be busy, waits too long to lift his head to greet it. (He cannot pretend this is even an experiment, knows but will not admit that he is forcing what cannot come.) His phone, aligned neatly alongside his open notebook, trembles slightly as it chimes for his attention, jumps once and then twice more. Sherlock reads the name as his heart rate drops back down, as he dismisses the message.

Not important, not anymore.

Seventy-three seconds later, another message (perception ratchets up now when he does not need it to, when he half-desires that it wouldn't, and it's a Change like the others). Sherlock glances again needlessly at the phone, at the name (John texts only for a case and all cases come through Sherlock first) and breathes out, steadies himself.

(Flickers behind his eyes, a subtle sensation within the cavern of his chest.)

The third text comes quicker than the last, and his eyes lift before his mind stops the movement of his body, his gaze latching hungrily onto the name only to splinter off again, stubbornly dismiss the sender as completely as he is capable (much more capable Before).

(Except he likes her, is rattled by the hardness beneath her bright smile, but he _likes_ her, another person slipping into him through the cracks that John had caused inside. She laughs at his jokes (almost) the way that John does, looks impressed with his ideas, thoughts—)

There is a momentary reprieve, a minute bleeding into two, and then his phone chimes again, screen flicking bright and noise filling the flat with an imperious request. Two messages this time, one sent immediately after the other, and his body responds.

There is no true question of the sender this time, only an idiot would question the very idea, but his fingers hover where they have been for the last several minutes, and his control skips, his gaze jolting up from his work to the screen to read the name fully.

 _Not John_ , as he'd well been aware, and yet he stares, takes a moment to regain control.

But muscles inside him stay tight, the tremble in his hands reminiscent of other responses that he remembers his body exhibiting with clarity despite the passage of years.

The sixth comes, the noise the same and yet seemingly gentle—

Nothing special about what he is fiddling with, nothing new, nothing that he had not known to completion so many years before the Now that he currently resides in, and yet he is spiraling through this the same way he finds himself spiraling through the life Before, retracing steps that he has no need to retrace, and if this is his real experiment, the real answer he knows and is only half-trying to disprove—

(The Changes seem to be permanent.)

Silence now, the screen gone dark, and he is staring blankly at it when it returns to life (skims his insides with feeling he does not wish to let loose, that he knows will lead to nothing) and he reads the name needlessly, uselessly.

Not John.

(Such is the world now, all things can be divided into John and Not John)

Exposed, lethal because of it, he draws his hands back to remove the gloves, sets them aside and reaches silently for the phone, pleased that the tremor is now gone.

A brush of a thumb to unlock it (all from her, the same sender, and his tongue flicks against his teeth as he reads the name on all of the messages anyway because _maybe John_ ) and, in a surge of irritation that only feeds into itself, he deletes each one quickly, efficiently.

Mary sends another only a moment later and he draws in a breath, lets it out.

Deletes it with only a moment's effort—

(nothing else can be deleted anymore, things stick inside him, fester)

A quick series of raps, calm despite the firm order in the short tune, and he closes his eyes and feels almost like Himself, the world around him laughable, John harmless and distant and if that had been a lie even in the beginning, it had been a needed one, a useful one.

Sherlock clings to the pettiness (let her wait, let her stand and feel useless, uncomfortable, _unwanted_ like—) but it's slipping away already, and she has no interest in measuring time against anyone else, and it's one of the few aspects of her he lets himself absorb.

There is no sound of fidgeting outside of the door, no restless noise of a worried individual out of her surroundings, and when she sighs loudly enough for him to hear it, soft and unconcerned by his lack of response, there is nothing dismissive or worried in the voice—

Sherlock draws back from it uneasily, moves without thinking to draw open the door, glance down at the woman gazing right back at him pleasantly.

“Good afternoon,” Mary greets, the smile on her face warm in her voice, and her eyes are bright and brown as he stares, bits and pieces inside clattering to find a balance.

Always pleased to see him, pleased to see everyone, love in her enough to greet the world and there is a glint there, gone when he looks for it but never missing when he does not, and he knows the glint and is taken aback by it as he always seems to be, by the honesty of it amongst all of her blinding light.

Sherlock blinks, catches sight of her as a whole, and abruptly stops, mind catching and locking onto the fall of dark hair, open and loose about her shoulders, drawn back and controlled only by the blue knit hat stuffed onto her head. No braid, no ponytail even, the contained rope of her hair suddenly gone from her image. He's never seen her without her hair drawn back, not in the months since John had introduced them (she simply does not leave her hair open) and this is not that lack of control, this is—

It is the first truly interesting thing he has allowed himself to notice in months, perhaps (sluggish movement inside him, thoughts struggling to gain traction).

He steps back, steps to the side, and she beams at him as she invades the flat, and he simply stares after because her hair is still tucked beneath the collar of her coat (he tells himself that she's a dissembler as gifted as John but no, what she does is beyond that and besides, John has reached a level all his own when it comes to that technique).

Smooth movement as she peels the coat off but keeps it close, folding it over her arms and in front of her as she steps up and tilts her head back and greets his eyes. “Thanks,” she tells him, and there's bits and pieces, scattered and uncatalogued, and he blinks once, twice, watches her bright smile display teeth and that glint bury itself deep in her gaze.

His hand is still frozen in its movement to close the door behind him, can feel the skin above his eyes folding, creasing, as he watches her so skillfully close off some parts and expose others like she had the first time he'd glimpsed her tucked comfortably at John's side—

Mary displays herself, coat folded over her arm— (decision not to set personal items down in their space— their space?— of course their space, _theirs_ —) and feet together, chin lifted up in offering— (nothing to offer him, but there's something) and now a flash of exasperation as she watches him catalog against his control.

The froth of her shawl-turned-scarf (old and hand-knit, a once deep red toned by time to a softer shade) that she wears only when she's spending her spare time with John, that friendship between them that Sherlock is finding so difficult to quantify (John spends time with her even though their relationship has been so harshly snapped apart, goes out with her for coffee, spends time with her despite moving back into this place with few explanations for their separation and still Sherlock refuses to question it) and she's wearing the ruby earrings (antique, slight damage on the left) that he sees her in when she cannot fully hide some sorrow that Sherlock cannot identify and she's already put her hand lotion on at least twice (two different scents, the more floral bottle kept by her bed and the small honey-scented tube kept in the bottom of her purse) and washed her hands since then again (used to using her hands constantly even before she'd begun to work with children) and where is her purse (not planning to stay, but her feet are braced, her stance solid, something unyielding and angry—)

His mouth snaps open, a hint of emotion stronger than what he's felt in months (not the truth— _stop_ ) flaring with sudden heat inside him, and then is crushed, almost innocently so, when Mary makes a little pleased noise and turns away, begins to ease towards the kitchen (cautious, not uncomfortable herself— few things make her uncomfortable— not true, nothing makes her uncomfortable but she notices the tension that her intrusion creates in his shoulders, his jaw) and everything about her is suddenly honest and sincere— removed? “Do you have a bite to eat?”

No breakfast this morning, though it's been hours since she's woken (had she slept very much, no, but she doesn't need much sleep and despite her worry she'd slept well when she had gotten to sleep— because everything about her is self-assured but somehow not irritatingly so— and Sherlock likes her even more, absurdly) and he watches as she flips the kettle on as if she's been in the flat all her life (at ease everywhere), watches her finally set her coat to the side on the open counter space (out of the way, removed from the places where he and John (had once) scattered their own belongings) and start bringing out the bread, the butter, the jam— as obsessed as John, and the nostalgia (John is stiff and soldier-like now, refusing to leave his side but refusing as well to stand at ease) only adds to that ever-fluctuating pain inside.

Because John had been with him when he had been gone, carried stubbornly inside him, and now John's the one that's gone, removed more fully within their flat than he had ever been while they had been physically separated, because then John had been reachable—no, more than that, there had been no question how it would end, what Sherlock had been carrying himself forward for and now Sherlock can find very little to motivate him

(that's a lie, a bad lie, given away by sweaty palms and a hollow ache inside when John comes home every night and dismisses him all over again)

and all he has is John's _closed door_.

“Do you even eat breakfast?” Mary prods, glancing over her shoulder with a curious tilt of her head, the edge of concern in her eyes that of a professional (always a caretaker, the echo of John's own being reflected in the way her gaze catches his collarbones, his shoulders) and he absorbs her quick expression of mild exasperation when he only stares at him blankly. “Not even a little bit of toast, Sherlock?”

(Almost maternal, hideously so, a response now well-trained enough to be instinctive for her, an imprint left and never discarded because it works so well, because it's also what she would have been if— something there had been different.)

“I don't eat.”

He's too stiff, too obvious but Mary only sighs ( _oh Sherlock_ ) and rolls her neck (a slip so meaningless as to be mostly inconsequential) and her wrists and then shifting, one foot to another (something here making her genuinely uncomfortable— no, upset).

“He came running to me again last night,” Mary says then, and chews and swallows the toast as if it can satisfy her. His heartbeat has only just calmed from the words, blood in his ears only just eased, when she continues, pointed but not harshly: “The stress is going to kill him, Sherlock.”

Sherlock's lips part, close again, and he can only stand where he is, hovering in the space he's keeping open, waiting to be filled again.

“I can only play so many hands of rummy, Sherlock, and you can't hide forever.”

(He's not hiding, John is, John is closed off and unwelcoming and only stares at him sometimes across the room as if he's waiting for a movement that Sherlock is too frozen to commit, and why had he even returned to Sherlock if this is how it's going to be, at his side when it matters but gone when it's begun to matter far more?)

But all he says (mildly too theatrical, but he can't help it, and Mary goads and pushes and smiles as he finds himself sounding childishly wounded) is, “Maybe he _misses_ you.”

Tiny creases beside her eyes, a little twist at the corner of her mouth— amusement at his expense, labeling him “foolish” and not even hiding it. “We're as close as we've ever been, Sherlock, not that much has changed since we separated—” Painful, the way his brain tries to grasp what she means, the confusing varieties of relationships that he never had interest in figuring out Before— “and we've made our choice, don't you know that?” She finishes the first bit of toast, sips at her tea but no, she's more worried than she's showing, rolling her wrists again, smoothing palms together in lieu of actually being able to moisturize them. (Purse still in the car.) “We still care about each other, you do understand that—” she seems so sure, as if she has any idea how his brain works or doesn’t anymore, not really— “and I need to know he's going to be okay—”

The moment is frozen, Mary at a loss, Sherlock so curious that for a moment even the storm of emotion he's been blundering through for so many months falls away (loneliness, an unbearable awful loneliness that she hadn't even been aware of for so very long, and Sherlock has always refused to deduce Mary in such a way, turned his mind away when he began to pick it out without meaning to but now—)

(thirty-five, right-handed, skin so tanned that even years in London have not driven it from her skin, mother died early (known already, she carries it with her so fearlessly) and father gone (facts about the father are compartmentalized so well even he can't read), no siblings, no family— no, some acquaintances that she maintains despite them being the source of some extreme consternation— no, _confusion_ , a brush of emotional contact that disturbs her much more than John ever had the ability to— this other a male, he's oddly sure, a romantic connection? yes, as romantic as she has any interest in being— and Mary carries her griefs with her quietly, calmly, does not let them drag behind her like a chain, knows better than to let such a weight move beyond her control)

Sherlock blinks, looks, watches her open further—

Mary is a carefully-constructed collection of self-perceptions that allowed her to survive her childhood (fifteen or sixteen years, no more than that, before she'd been alone on the streets, somewhere in Pakistan to begin with, of that he's sure, but her travels had taken her elsewhere very quickly) with an older authoritative figure (father, military background but confusing to read, clear evidence of undiagnosed mental illness and viciously ruthless, wrapping his identity about his daughter like a baby blanket) after the loss of the caretaker (mother, data tightly locked up, kept away from anyone who may glance deeper) and an easy ability to connect to others (in truth she only yields to others with a smile and a nod but few know the difference anyway, certainly Sherlock hadn't until John) but it's a lie that makes others happy and she doesn't mind much one way or another, she'd been alone for so long that it's part of her make-up now, part of her organs and of her cells, part of the very thinking patterns that make her who she is, her caring sentimentality always open but her mind smooth and untouchable when someone reaches back, attempts to connect to her— but John, John, he has no idea what he does to people like them, like Sherlock, like her, the way that he pulls them apart and fits their pieces back together and never notices—)

Sherlock closes his eyes, a headache beginning to brew at his right temple, and breathes and tries to tune her out of his awareness, attempts to smooth her out of his perceptions.

“You're eating away at him, Sherlock, do you understand?” Fear in the corners of her words, and he can sense her movement, smell toast on her breath, sweat on her body (she hadn't showered before coming to corner him, goad him, beg him). “Is this what you want?”

The same question he'd asked himself, first when the Before had become the life he shared with John, someone at his side constantly, suffocatingly there beside him, impossible to completely hide from, watchful in a way that Sherlock hadn't quite understood, had assuredly dismissed as the skilled watchfulness of a doctor-defender- _killer_ that had always possessed those same qualities, probably (without a doubt) since childhood.

(Impossible reading John in those ways, too much for Sherlock to work through and if he'd sometimes refused to, stubbornly closed himself away from the bits and pieces of John, one could hardly blame him, Sherlock was... out of his element with John Watson, always, that had been the problem, the real problem, the one that had picked at him as his time with John...)

 _Is that what you want?_ and now the question reminds him of long nights and other countries, John a presence buried deep inside (as if John had slit him open and stitched himself in between Sherlock's lungs) and he'd been so sure (afraid) that John would fade away, that it would slip and slide and settle back into the Before but no.

The Change cemented into fact, a loss felt more keenly than his brother, than Mrs. Hudson or than Lestrade and no, John is beyond a _loss_ , something lost can be replaced.

Before does not exist anymore, there had been only John At His Side and John Out Of Reach, and now there is only John Turned Away, the doctor frantically rushing away from Sherlock's reach before Sherlock can manage one nervous and hopeful step after.

John has not chosen him but, but, Sherlock itches to move, to step, to test.

(could be dangerous, yes, could be more than worth it)

“That bubble you're feeling is anger, Sherlock,” Mary informs him flatly, and he can hear the expression on her face in her voice, knows this is the part of her that only one or two have seen. “It's something that comes back, you need to know that—” but it's how he is, how he was born, not just the quick thoughts he couldn't stop, could never stop (except those rare and distant times when Mycroft had reached out and pulled him close, shifted him and shifted himself and not pulled back even though it seemed the entire moment always left Sherlock feeling like a mannequin much too large for his older brother to easily handle) but the idiotic false-innocence that the world had spoken around him (“cannibalism doesn't sound that unnatural,” a comment that had made his brother stare at him over the dinner table one evening with a wrinkled brow as if words were Very Important) and the push inside him to keep moving, keep looking and searching and understanding and now he's a race horse debilitated from overuse (his own overuse, not something he will admit, ever) and he can't be anything other than the man he's been so sure he is, he's never wrong, not about himself, “—it's okay to be angry after what you've been through.”

He's been through nothing, deleted that, erased that (nights he'd lain awake with open eyes cycling through thoughts and memories of John, strengthening them instead of removing them as he'd always promised (lied to himself) that he would) and Sherlock's shoulders are beginning to ache from some weight he's unwilling to throw away—

His mouth opens, begins to close—

“Sherlock.”

Mary is in front of him, pulling her coat slowly back on (movements that a teacher knows to use but something like her understands so much better) and not bothering to hide the glint now, the way it highlights the softness that it usually hides in. “You need to leave.” A hint of an amused smile floats over her lips, fades away again so smoothly only his memory is a promise it existed in the first place—

The wrong thought, the worst possible thought, the line from the abstract example to John blinding when it connects, fits together— John warm and laughing— giggling and _trusting_ — beside him as Sherlock's heart pounds— a constant presence in his life, the body and memories and thinking patterns that make 221B Sherlock's home instead of a place where he resides—

“It really is okay to be angry.”

Before he can stop, before he can fold it away even as it rises inside him— “I think that John is already angry enough for the both of us,” escapes him, the bubble inside him expanding exponentially in size before he realizes it's happened, growing to push, to fill, to destroy whatever it can find, the absolute _betrayal_ driving it—

Stop, breathe, and Mary is just staring at him when the red haze is suddenly gone, when his vision has cleared and he is under control again, when he remembers that he's been without John now and he never wants to do it again, never again, he'd rather sit and rot here (all of him, everything that he is rotting now, collapsing, walls crumbling, foundation cracking and splitting beneath his feet) than push and find It gone again.

 _(I will burn the heart out of you_ but he hadn't, had been so much crueler and smarter as to make Sherlock burn it out of himself.)

“Out,” is all he says, and Mary nods, obeys.

“You do have my number,” she reminds him as she reaches up to draw her hair from beneath the collar of her coat, as she touches the left earring (compulsive) and then lowers her hand again (knowing when to stop herself). “I've told him I have plans so he won't be able to come hide at my flat tonight—” and though he knows it, the thought ignites that thing inside him again, roots of his teeth sparking at the thought of John hiding from him, running from him, how dare he, _she does not even want him_ — “won't feel like this forever.”

He twitches, sucks in a breath (like himself again, for just a moment, and that bleak weight still won't lift) and she waves a hand at him, shakes her head. “I'm going,” she stresses fearlessly and makes for the door, stepping around him carefully (she can't possibly know what he's experiencing, the fragile-glass sensation that gets worse everyday, impossible for her to know his experiences) and twisting the knob with an easy flick of her fingers.

A pause at the last moment, light on her feet, and she looks back at him, studies him— “It'll be okay,” she promises him, and there, a remembered bleakness in her distractingly tender eyes, in the softness of her mouth. “If you survive it, Sherlock, it'll be okay after it's over, it's just...” She doesn't know him, he will ignore her, he knows himself— “The anger has to come before it can go, love.”

And then Mary is gone, and Sherlock is alone, and 221B is empty and silent around him.

The human pieces some feet away have been forgotten, the chair that waits for John to return sits where it has sat since John had brought it back with him, and John circles it sometimes (six and a half months now, six and a half months since Mary had left him and he'd come back and begun to punish Sherlock) but will not sit down if Sherlock is there—

(no dust though and yes, Sherlock hears him in the night if Sherlock gives him privacy, hears him slip down to sit in the dark in the chair and Sherlock does not let himself push)

Why even come back, why taunt him, why give with one hand and take with the other but he hadn't come back by choice, Mary had dismissed him and he had come back then—

His breathing is beginning to quicken, the pulse pounding in Sherlock's ears as he stares silently at the chair, and his eyes swing up, feet moving slowly, feeling predatory as he considers the door that leads to the upstairs, the little prison, John's carefully-constructed solitary confinement—

Away from Sherlock, punishing Sherlock, slipping around the edges but never staying, punishing him as if Sherlock has not been punished enough, as if years (not months but _years_ ) alone (alone, no one's voice, no one's warmth, space that John had carved for himself left cold, John sacrificed for John) haven't been enough, as if John has any right—

A flutter inside, a subtle pressure that he's been avoiding for months—

The bubble bursts.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Milk, eggs, bread— and lentils, lamb, a handful of vegetables chosen carefully.

Diaper bag that she uses as a purse hooked onto a shoulder, single paper bag resting against the same hip, Mary pauses for a moment at her doorway, weighing a variety of responses.

Then she sighs (decision made) and she unlocks her front door with a quick twist of her key, deposits it into the top of the shopping bag and slips into her home. The lights are still off (she hates waste even more than John does) and the curtains are still open, and the darkening sky doesn't seem to bother the woman perched on one of her stools.

Of course not, nothing bothers her when The Phone is out, and the teacher in Mary twitches and fumes, is ruthlessly smothered down because she knows better but still.

It's a matter of respect, and Mary can't help her opinions, her beliefs.

Hats are to go off upon breaching any home, shoes are to be deposited neatly beside the front door, television is a rare treat and mobile phones are to be ignored when you're a guest— and with everything else she's inherited from her father, it's curious that these traditions have been the hardest to shake, to separate from herself once she'd decided to use them.

Years without feeling any urge to express a hint of hospitality, and now she cannot turn it off.

“Please shut it off,” she orders when she knows there's no irritation in her voice, and Anthea nods but keeps going, thumbs flicking, eyes scanning the miniature screen once more.

Mary exhales harshly, mutters just loud enough to carry, “here, Mary, let me help you— oh, _thank you_ , Anthea, your courtesy is very much appreciated” and carries the bag right past the young woman and into the kitchen. “You couldn't even get the door for me.”

Voice distant, amusement barely disguised: “I'm not actually here.”

Foolish that she is here at all, impossibly foolish, and Mary had taught her better, she knows she had, everybody knows she had, there is a reason Anthea is by far his favorite, that she is the one he chose over all others.

“Dr. Watson is at home tonight,” Anthea reminds her and Mary pulls a face as she begins to unload the bag, separates refrigerator items from dinner items, and tries to pretend (useless) that she isn't going to have a dinner companion. “And you know that Mr. Holmes does not leave the flat without his chaperone.”

Mary pointedly ignores the last, replies instead with, “You're too obvious, the way you always show up when you know I'm cooking your favorites.”

Anthea shrugs, makes a curious little squint down at her screen, asks without very much awareness, “Are you going to make aubergine tonight too?”

Mary lifts her head in disbelief, but Anthea's eyes stay locked where they are.

“No,” she says slowly, unable to hold in her irritation, uncomfortable with the normality of the world now that she feels it slip away again, how this part feels so much more than what she's made for herself, “no, Anthea, surely not, I only bought them to watch them rot.”

It's the harshest that Mary is capable of being (harshest, not coldest, they're two very different things and people don't understand that) and Anthea knows it, remembers, pauses mid-thumb flick and lifts her head and meets Mary's eyes across the distance.

There is a moment, a heavy stretch between them, and then Anthea says, a teenager again, dirty-streaked but steady: “I apologize, Miss Morstan.” She snaps her phone off without another glance down at it, sets it on the bar space between them. “How may I help?”

She's in her twenties now, reaching her prime at last, and if she's one of the better students that Mary's ever had, if she'd from the beginning been everything that Mary could have ever hoped to find, Mary allows the truth of it to ease the irritation. “Wash your hands,” she orders mildly, and Anthea is already undoing her blazer and moving around to the sink.

Mary spares a moment to check, to watch.

Hot water, just the right amount of soap, a full forty seconds passing as she works the froth up her wrists and between her fingers and under her perfect nails (longer than Mary's ever kept hers, long and sharp and lightly colored, and Mary's have always stayed filed down).

And yet it makes Mary proud, prouder than any of her little ones that she teaches now, because she teaches them letters, colors, shapes, yes, but she's taught Anthea _herself_.

“I really do want some aubergine,” Anthea mutters as she dries her hands, a little childish now in a way she'd never been even when she had been a child, glancing at Mary from under the fall of her hair, and Mary smiles tightly back, only says, “And go get a hair tie from my bedroom, pull it all back out of your face, you know that's unsanitary.”

She's grown her own hair out, has kept it long, and only now she remembers that it's still open, that she hasn't remembered to pull it back from her face despite hating how it gets everywhere, _everywhere_ , and shouts quick after Anthea: “And bring one for me, too, love.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

There's no case, and no Mary, and so there's no distraction.

There's just the hospital, the patients, simple car accidents and silly household accidents that cause shocking destruction and sudden illness bad enough to scare people to see what's wrong instead of so insistently avoiding it. No Mary, no card games or companionship, or quiet acceptance; she's a companion of the smoothest kind, the kind of friend he'd been unable to make as a boy or as a man right up until he'd met her, and she's patient and she knows enough that she has no need to ask questions.

So John wanders for a while, calls Mike uselessly (it goes to voicemail) and purposefully ignores the glaring awareness that Sebastian is in town this month and doesn't let himself call Clara (she's been picking up all the shifts she can, working so desperately hard to get enough to get a flat for herself close by) and in a last ditch attempt (he'll never admit she's the real top of his short list of friends now) Sally but she just shoots back quickly “i'm on a date, leave me be” and then even faster “pub and a game tomorrow, yeah?” (and she really seems to like this guy, she keeps going out on dates with him, it's been _months_ )— and defeated, he finally eases his way back home (to Sherlock).

Before he's unlocking the door, he's confused.

Someone is playing the violin (Sherlock, stupid to wonder for a split second who it is) and the someone is— playing it— a bit wrong, yeah, yes, it sounds a bit— wrong.

Confusion, a hint of curiosity, and he lets himself in quicker than he usually does now only to stop— again— at the sight of the disturbed carpet, the table shoved just slightly to the side. Nothing else is disturbed, no, not true, there's a— scratch, yes, a scratch, there on the banister of the stairs—

“Oh thank god!” he hears, Mrs. Hudson's voice thin and a little crazed, and she's peeking at him from the side, eyes wide and arms wrapped round herself. “He's gone mad,” she half-whispers, and twists her neck to stare up the stairs with such a motherly worry that John wants to hold her for a moment, wants to soothe her. “I tried going up a few times but he wouldn't let me in, and then the yelling got worse and then the crashing started—” Not angry, she's not angry and it's obvious even as she gestures vaguely upwards as if she can't possibly keep all of her feelings in, and John squirms and tries to ignore the way the bits and pieces of things inside him try to clatter together, try to fit into their rightful form despite his refusal to let them. “I think he must have torn the walls down!”

Sherlock is still playing and now John can hear his footsteps, a pace that he can only label a prowl carrying him in a vaguely circular shape around the living room of their flat, the footsteps (stomping, John would label it stomping if he weren't so aware that the footsteps are Sherlock's) and the playing drifting down to him through the ceiling.

John glances back at the door behind him, his escape onto Baker Street.

Maybe, maybe he can just—

A discordant note, a harsh and ugly sound, and John swings back the way he'd been, works his mouth in confusion (he's not sure what else the curling nervous tightness inside his gut could be, he's sure he's not sure) and snaps, “It's fine, it's fine, I'll fix it” and Mrs. Hudson makes a little sound of relief and smiles at him as if yes, of course he has such power, of course such a concept makes sense, and touches his arm— and then shoves him forward.

Grimacing, he leaves her behind, forces himself to ascend the staircase, to keep going.

Sherlock must hear him (impossible that he doesn't) but the disharmonious playing continues, winding and wheeling from one harsh tune to the next before the first can be finished. Clumsy, harsh playing, and John opens the door half-expecting, no, he doesn't know what he's expecting, doesn't understand the edge of something in his blood—

John's fingers twitch, uselessly, around the knob, jaw flexing helplessly.

A table knocked over, a chair on its side, the rugs kicked up, the cushions dragged from the couch and tossed about, mail and paperwork strewn across the floor. Books have been pulled from the shelves, piled haphazardly into the corners, every light in the flat is on, oh god, even the wallpaper has been peeled from the walls in several places, the skull's been thrown into the overturned wastebasket—

(but the kitchen is dark, what he can see of it untouched, and then he dismisses it)

—and why's there wood, shattered wood, several large pieces (something familiar about it, the grain pattern he can see in the light) shoved into the corner of the main room as if they're in time-out and there's his chair, sitting untouched amongst the chaos as Sherlock circles one way and then another, stepping smoothly through the wreckage and of course he is, of course, Sherlock is right at home after destroying their home—

“What did you do?” He can barely recognize his own voice, is startled by the steadiness of his own words, the hard tone that he'd barely managed even in Afghanistan. “Sherlock,” he says, and then “Sherlock” because the other man is steadfastly ignoring him, keeps circling and moving and walking and still has not glanced his way.

There's something there, in the set of his shoulders and the frantic quality of his movements (worry twitches through John's thoughts, patients brought in against their will, a danger to themselves, to others, to _themselves_ ) but that wood, he knows the wood—

“Stop playing,” he snaps, stepping forward to grab Sherlock, jerk the damn violin out of his hands (smash it, he should smash it, smash whatever else he can find that Sherlock gives any damn care about, should hurt him) and then, “What the hell did you do?” when Sherlock slips away too fast, steps around him easily and still refuses to look his way.

“Dammit, Sherlock—”

This time, he stops himself, stops himself because this movement would have been a different one, would have been a loss of control that John knows he can't come back from and so can't allow (very little he can allow now) and doesn't grab for Sherlock, doesn't let himself attempt to make the man stop moving—

Out of the corner of his eye, catching sight of the destroyed wood— and where the hell did Sherlock get an ax, why would Sherlock even _have_ an ax—

A doorknob glints at him.

John stops, mind grinding to a halt— fury, a shock of it, an almost childish rage to rush right at Sherlock and start trying to hit him— fear, no, terror, and once he feels it, it floods him, destroys the ire and sweeps away most of his functioning thought—

The breath rattles out of him, fills the silence that has suddenly fallen, Sherlock hesitating between one step and another— when John finally pulls his gaze to the left, there's an odd glint in Sherlock's eyes, something that's usually so well hidden it might as well not exist.

“I want my door,” John tells him, the panic in him debilitating, he's all of a sudden barely functional, and Sherlock is now standing rather firmly between him and the open door he'd just come through, and Sherlock's got that look in his eye, that... glint of something—

“No.”

(his voice is wrong, has gone all funny, not hoarse, not rough, just... thin, a little weak around the edge of the word, and something in his jaw— there, a tremble, as Sherlock's eyes jump back to the empty doorway and then hurriedly skip to John's face)

(fear)

(in the back of John's mind, a burst of awareness, that Sherlock has gone _insane_ —)

John opens his mouth and then closes it immediately, doctor inside him roiling up to smother down the rage he feels inside, the tight and suffocating anxiety that's driving it, and he realizes vaguely that he's moving now, stepping around the room differently, carefully. Because Sherlock's moving to keep pace with him, skittish and bright-eyed, and John's door has been smashed to smithereens with— oh, yes, it must be an ax, he can see the cut marks— oh, look, there it is, the ax dropped haphazardly near the stairs that lead upstairs.

When his own voice comes out with a simple, “You need to sit down and take a breath,” (he barely recognizes the steadiness) Sherlock's lips twist and his eyes narrow and it's so _Sherlock_ that John falters for a minute, feeling as if there's just been a blow to his gut.

Then: “no” Sherlock bites out, and pokes vaguely at him with the bow as if there's not a good distance between them and there's something obviously distasteful about John.

“You _destroyed our home_!” bursts out of John— _oh my god_ , the doctor inside him mutters with secondhand embarrassment at John's lack of control— and Sherlock makes a wet, breathy noise like a snake warning him away (Sherlock's got his eyes locked full on the front door now, pupils blown wide, but he's stopped, and doesn't seem to be wanting to move—)

“Not our home anymore,” Sherlock half-spits at him then, and John blinks and falters and blinks again and Sherlock's looking at him like John's guilty of treason, like John's the one that had pitched himself off the roof of St. Bart's and been gone for years and come back like nothing had changed, like the words had not sat inside him, unspoken, sat and rotted and festered until Mary had given him someone to follow with no feeling— “No more hiding, John, you will be here or you will be,” a soundless hesitation, so slight and so subtle that John's sure that he must have heard wrong, “gone from here.”

And now silence, John staring at his flatmate with a blank expression, Sherlock standing before him with such an awkward grip on the violin, flicking the bow this way and that as the seconds tick by and John's brain turns the words over one way and then another.

“An ultimatum?” he finally manages (a bubble inside him, thin-skinned and getting thinner, black humor sparking through him as it does) and draws himself up and wonders at the way Sherlock sways slightly as if braving a storm. “You're giving me an ultimatum, me?” A jerk of his index finger to the side. “About _my_ door, about me staying _in my own room_?” The finger jerks up, levels itself at Sherlock (a hint of a flush at Sherlock's throat, a momentary tension in Sherlock's shoulders). “The door that you've already _killed_?”

And maybe, maybe, that last word hits a high, screeching pitch that it shouldn't.

But Sherlock stares at him, narrows his eyes just so and stares and stares— and then his chin comes up, his face smooths, and he peers at John (oh no, stares down his nose at John, preciously holier-than-thou) and flips back, bland and flat and too careless: “The foul thing” (foul thing?) “didn't have a pulse, John, so that's hardly an adequate description for my destruction—”

He doesn't finish, can't finish, and John will forever remember the sudden white of his face when the doctor surges forward, impossibly fast, will forever remember the way Sherlock seems to contemplate ducking to the side before snapping right back, bracing himself rather uselessly between John and the open door. John shoves him, a harder shove than he'd have believed himself capable, and there's a hard strike against his wrist, the bow snapping fast against the bone and though he jerks his hand back, it doesn't stop his rush to get up, away.

They go down together onto the steps, John lunging (wait, wait, wait, he wants to strangle Sherlock— no, no, he's trying to get up the stairs, and how is one part of him trying to throttle Sherlock even while his heart's demanding he run, flee, rush up and away) to untangle them as he grabs onto a step above him, uses it to haul himself up.

There's a “no!” somewhere beneath him (panicked and furious and yes, offended, too, and so much later John will laugh at that, but later is not now) and a hand slaps over John's face, limbs skittering across his back, and an undignified squeak bursts out of John as he slams back onto the steps, Sherlock attached to him like some crazed little beast, little puffs of breath striking the back of John's neck, nails catching his shoulder, his chest, a heel digging into his thigh—

Oh right, John thinks, and remembers that he's a soldier and rolls hard, pushing himself off and to the side and there's a squawk (John will fight tears later, and Sherlock will stare at him with thin lips and a refusal to admit that such a noise had ever slipped from his throat) as Sherlock hits the wall (flattened) and John is up and running when a leg catches his.

A little “fuck!” flies out of him, his arms fly up, and then he's back down (a noise beside him, a smothered but triumphant hiss of victory) and he grunts, tries to catch at the bannister because he's going to fall—

But he doesn't.

Stillness, on his back and breathless, a hand gripping hard at his leg, John is sprawled messily across the width of their staircase. John jerks in a breath, jerks in another, struggles to get his body to remember the pattern but there's another pattern, fingers flexing nervously into his ankle, anxious breaths above him.

John twists (has to, it's the first time they've touched in months, and the touch is searing, brands him, ignites and banks him all at once, just the subtlest contact between a hand and an ankle) and finds Sherlock staring at him from a huddled twist of limbs against the wall, irises almost gone, tip of his tongue darting out to flick fast over his bottom lip.

John says, “ow” and Sherlock jerks his hand back (and his body does something, jolts a little) and that just hurts more, the absence leaving him aware of a sore shoulder and sore knees and he adds, unable to stop himself, “no, don't” and Sherlock just stares at him.

A lingering hesitation because they'd always been in each others space and then not at all (nothing to touch, he'd had nothing to touch but a gravestone) and now, still, months have passed and the space is too big (neither of them are big enough to fill it by themselves) and Sherlock sits before him, startlingly open, all wide eyes and oddly flushed skin and John realizes too slowly that Sherlock's hand is just—

Hovering, frozen between them, fingers outstretched.

Slowly, wary and cautious and rattled, John eases up onto one elbow, shifts and then stops, watches Sherlock's gaze track him, shifts and stops, and Sherlock reminds him of some well-trained hunting dog, primal instincts so perfectly controlled it's a bit unnatural.

Shift, stop, watch Sherlock watch him.

Pain twitches in his back and he grimaces, and there, just there, a flutter of the muscles in Sherlock's jaw, a spark of something that would be guilt in any other gaze.

“Feeling more violent than usual?” and he can't even mean it as a joke but self-preservation tries and fails because there, guilt and something else, something made of sharp teeth and harsh words and that single-minded hunger that only comes from starvation. The fingers tremble, Sherlock's face trying and failing to close itself off, and he blinks once, twice, begins to draw in a slow and controlled breath—

John grunts into motion, thinking to get to his feet, and then stops all at once.

Because Sherlock lifts right up with him, braces his other hand against the wall before John realizes what's happening and pushes halfway up from his tangle of limbs on the steps— and then he stops too, consternation chasing confusion across his face as if John's sending him too many signals to respond to at once.

“I'm leaving,” bursts out of John, “I'm leaving—” and the words splinter out of him like a plea because this, here, this has been brewing and he can't, he really can't, because he can, because he could, and that's the problem, with Sherlock he _can_ anything.

He _will_ anything.

“Don't,” Sherlock urges, “don't, don't go, stay, stay here.”

Like full sentences are a bit too tricky right now and they might be, they probably are, the way Sherlock looks so terribly unhinged, so desperately undone.

“You destroyed my door,” he chokes out, because this is really very important, this is very important, the safety's gone, he simply doesn't have enough self-control—

Words so fast they almost melt together, enunciation washed away by some barrier come undone inside Sherlock, “I'll make you a new one.” John blinks, frowns, startled right back out of his thoughts by the rapid words. “A better one, no weak spots, any design you want, any wood, any shape, I'll build it with my own hands, I'll leave all the splinters in when I'm done, I'll carry them with me when it's done, I'll leave them in my fingers, _anything_ you want, but no locks, I'll destroy that one too if you make me put a lock on it, no more locks, I hate your locks, _I hate them_ , I hate it, don't you understand, why would you do this to me—” A catch in Sherlock's voice and though John's frozen, locked where he is, Sherlock is slipping down to invade John's personal space, broad angles minimizing themselves, long body folding into itself just to get closer, too close, close enough for John to smell him. “—could you do this to me, I came back didn't I, I chose to come back despite the price and I learned and _I came back_ , I chose _you_ and you _didn't_ but I let you anyway, I don't _have_ to be first, I can be second or third, for you I'd come second or third, for you I'd come _last_ —”

Sherlock stops, mouth left half-open though the words shut off, and his eyes jerk, and John's brain does an absolutely remarkable job of compartmentalizing, of processing—

The first, that Sherlock smells like sweat, and it should be nothing new but it is because this isn't the sweat of the rush, the chase, the exertion but that other sweat, the acrid sickly scent that John knows so well from hospitals, from war, from his sister and his mother, from himself. Fear sweat, dread sweat, and he doesn't know the science of it really (a quick hysterical thought, hastily smothered: Sherlock probably does) but it's a truth he knows, the way someone's body betrays them when the brain knows it is in danger.

The second, that nothing should be this simple because the world is complicated, people are complicated, and things should be complicated because things have to have consequences, the world should be fair and he knows it isn't, he's known since he was a boy, but he likes to pretend that it bothers him, and everything had _hurt_ so much, the pain can't just be— gone like it had never happened.

The third, and this one burns through the first and the second, snaps them apart and pulls the bits and pieces down, down, down—

The world has, in this very moment, come crashing down around his ears and destruction is honest, is beautifully natural for every part of him, and the difference between them, the real difference, is that there's no division in him from that, no— jagged edges, no misunderstanding of what's right for people and what's a Bit Not Good at all.

Because he's _allowed_ to be this way, he kills and he saves, and ever the two are joined inside him (what do men like him become without the army, without the hospitals and he thinks he knows but it never bothers him very much and it's something Mary had understood, Mary with her smooth gaze and her cool orders, and despite the disgruntled “this is work, John, it's not a _high_ ” that night that she'd left him she still understands better than anyone he's ever met, even Sherlock) and now John closes his eyes and takes a breath, tension leaving his body as his head tilts to rest against their wall—

“John,” Sherlock breathes, “John” and the name dies off, falters and falls away.

The world's been all spun around, the things around him finally matching his insides, and John takes another few seconds for himself to find his new center of gravity, searches and searches and knows it's resting just out of reach but he keeps searching—

A noise (a halfhearted last attempt to verbalize something too big to fit through Sherlock's throat, to fit into his words or even his body) and John's eyes snap open, head lifting fast, awareness strung tight, an instantaneous response to the smothered plea.

Sherlock looks very much like there isn't anything left for him to draw on, like he's simply collapsed where he is, dangerously close to being pooled right in John's lap.

A half-humorous thought, bittersweet, strangely endearing: _but that's what's happened._

The only movement is the flutter of his eyes over John's face, up and down and left and right, over and over, again and again, default mode active despite the system's error.

(the memory of his body turning so boneless on the sidewalk, his doctor instincts obliterated, his soldier instincts helpless, all of John Watson only a _man_ for the first time that he could ever remember)

_how could you do this to me?_

Sherlock disbelieving, and John's seen it before but it's so much more now, so much more than Sherlock's gaze swinging harshly to him beside the pool the years before, the momentary whirl of shock and confusion that looked so incorrect on his face, and it's not an echo of that cracking voice that had reached him through the phone from the edge because _that_ had been only the first shocks of this.

And John hauls in a breath in what feels like years.

Finds his gravity at last.

John reaches up, reaches out, and Sherlock's chin tucks down, shoulders bracing, and the tension in his body notches up when palms slide across his jaw, smooth up and past and then rest there, fingers slipping into his hair, Sherlock's breath soft and ragged against his wrists, body tense but neck loose, and John has always been a natural at anatomy— here are Sherlock's arteries, his vertebrae, the meeting place between his body and his mind.

221B feels small again, closes around them like an embrace, and John's heart slips out of him with a sigh, a subtle breath that ruffles dark curls still damp with sweat.

“I am pissed about the door,” John murmurs into the quiet, and there's the faintest twitch from Sherlock, the closest the man seems capable of giving as a response, a hint of _yes, perhaps that may have been overkill_. “Talking, Sherlock, it's what people do.”

Sherlock's lip curls slightly, not dismissive so much as disgruntled, a promise that _words have proven useless to me in this situation_ and in this John is in full agreement.

_No. Sorry, I can't._

Memory sparks, ignites, and he finally eases back onto the steps the last bit, thumb stroking once and then twice across a still-flushed face, and Sherlock makes a muffled sound that fills the last bit of space between them, head drooping fully into John's hold. It all feels steady, weight free to settle instead of drag, and Sherlock makes that noise again when John leans forward to brush his lips against the man's crown, draw him in.

He pulls back, considers, waits.

After an eternity, after only a few moments, John feels the silent puff against his skin, the familiar (missing, it's been missing, had not come back with Sherlock) demand for attention, for John's complete focus despite all of the fragility of the moment.

The second contact between lips and skull is firmer, cautious but not afraid, and he stays in the moment longer this time, enjoying it, aware of the chaos he can already feel in the air (it's going to be worse, dangerous in a foreign way, but it's here finally, and now that it's exposed at least John can feel _beyond_ the lonely weight of it) and somehow unafraid.

Warfare is as easy as breathing, is flesh and blood and decisions made, and if this feels a little like preparing for it all over again, he decides that it doesn't care one way or another.

( _tonight_ , the little voice in his head murmurs, _only tonight are you so sure_ )

“You're a dick,” John feels the abrupt need to inform Sherlock, not because it's not a known fact but because he feels it needs to be said, to be included in the moment, and Sherlock lets out a thin groan of relief (it's not true anymore, not fully, but really Sherlock can only handle so much at once, and he won't admit it, and John doesn't need him to) and before John can brace himself the other man simply... pools into his hold.

The suddenness knocks his forehead against John's mouth, smashing his lips hard against his teeth, and he smothers the little grunt as he accepts the weight, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Sherlock's strangely regular-sized head and the other smoothing possessively across the sweep of Sherlock's back, curving to hold him where he is, to keep him from falling right out of his arms and down the few stairs.

Damp heat slips against John's shoulders even through the layers (impossible, there's too many layers— but this is Sherlock, none of the laws of the universe seem to be willing to stand up against the man so how the hell can he be expected to even try?) and the words are so muffled that John is left... genuinely confused, eyebrows wrinkling and mouth working for several seconds as he tries to piece it together. He settles finally for, “ _What_?”

Silence, stillness, until fingers flex feather-light against John's leg, until muscles twitch under John's hand and then loosen again. “Oh my _god_ ,” John whispers, and cannot smother the hint of amusement in the words as he gets a better grip around— around Sherlock, tries to shift and resettle his weight. Palm curling back around to cradle the sweep of Sherlock's throat, he finds himself suddenly reminded of holding an infant as the other man finally gets his head up, tilts it back until he appears to be settled quite comfortably.

“What?” John questions, humor died away, refusing to come across as dismissive.

Consideration, the gears in Sherlock's head turning impossibly slowly, lips parting over words that are gathered and then dismissed before he says, voice curiously steady, “Your door upset me.” John opens his mouth, thinks better of it, opens his mouth to try again— “You upset me.” John's mouth closes completely, something unhappy coiling inside him because there's a stiffness returning to Sherlock's limbs. “I was... _upset_.” He wants to speak, for the first time in the last minutes unsure of himself, but Sherlock is searching for words, is trying very obviously to string them together, to speak, and so John stays quiet, stays calm. “I think I'm still...” Hesitation, fear, and John begins to stroke the skin beneath his thumb, feels the edge of that tension ease. “Upset with you.”

Spoken like he's not even sure what to do with the concept of such a truth and if something in Sherlock seems to be folding away now that the words are out, tucking itself back in an attempt to hide himself, John... doesn't really find himself bothered by it at all.

“Mycroft upsets you,” he reminds Sherlock quietly, “and everybody annoys you.”

“But.” Sherlock's gaze moves past him, focuses intently on the wall behind them, and it's the most of _him_ that John's seen in— in too long, it's simply been too long. “Yes, that's true—” (only half-skipping over the acceptance of John's awareness of him, and it's new and amusing and John will bring it up later when their skin is thick again) “but—” and now the focus changes, becomes nervous, uneasy. No longer considering but _feeling_ that hesitation again, words apparently heavy on his tongue. “But I don't... _like_ being upset with you.”

John breathes, waits, watches his thumb rub soft circles into this man's skin.

Swallows down something heavy and painful inside him, smothers it down, knows instinctively that Sherlock is not capable of bearing the weight of it now, that the moment's not right, too much when John only now feels like he has air in his lungs again.

“The door seemed... a better alternative,” Sherlock informs him at last, and John presses his eyes closed, works hard not to let the easy touches at Sherlock's throat die away because he can feel that Sherlock's synchronized his own breathing to it, can feel the tension slip and slide inside him with each movement of John's thumb.

“To what?” John forces out, opening his eyes, looking down.

But Sherlock just stares at him, the muscles in his jaw locked, lips pressed together, eyes dark and shuttered and the _dread_ tells John everything but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, he needs this, he needs the words, the useless words that aren't big enough anyway.

But.

But, but, but, and he knows a dangerous moment when he's in one, knows the price of things and how it changes and how not to push and how to _listen_.

And not after this, not after all this, so he only says, “don't” and ducks his head with a shudder, presses his lips down to Sherlock's forehead, keeps his mouth pressed there until he can swallow all of the need inside him, until his own heart rate slows and he feels Sherlock relax against him, feels fingers fold into the fabric of his trousers and grip tight. “Don't,” he murmurs into Sherlock's hair, “don't, you don't—”

_No. Sorry, I can't._

“—have to right now.”

A sigh, more exhausted than John has ever heard from him, and Sherlock shifts and resettles, shifts and resettles until he's curled tight against John, going so far as to fold his legs up and hunch his back in a way that must be uncomfortable, twisting his shoulders in tiny ways until his arms are between their middles and his skull is tucked under John's chin.

The motion eventually stops, eventually stills, and John ignores the pain in his hip, his arse, the throbbing ache in his elbow and his back and oh, oh, his _wrist_ — and then sighs in quiet vexation when Sherlock wriggles, stops, wriggles again, makes a little frustrated mutter.

“Sherlock,” he says, and _feels_ the little flare of indignation the tone receives.

A little over a minute's peace before John feels the jerk of a shoulder.

“You do remember I'm the one who fell down the stairs,” he feels the need to point out, and Sherlock twitches unhappily and squirms, rolling his head under John's. “Do you want to—”

“No,” Sherlock says so fast that the emotion almost rolls up inside John again, the sudden panic in the word causing John to immediately touch his lips to that infuriatingly normal-feeling head, to stroke a palm across the curled surface of Sherlock's back and squeeze him tight until the stiffness drops away from the man again, until he huffs contently into John's jumper.

Two minutes pass this time, two whole minutes, and then John hisses in surprise when cold fingers dart under his jumper, when they slide fast around his middle to span the width of his ribs. He chokes on a desperate “god” and Sherlock mumbles something, noses hard into the wool he's still wrapped in, and starts trying to curl his toes inward.

“Oh _hell_ ,” John informs the world at large, and knows when to choose his battles.

They're not moving, and he can't make them, doesn't want to make them, and he's going to be sore for days, it's no question, and he needs to clean up, needs to badly, and he's so tired already but Sherlock is breathing into him, is breathing him in, and there's something horrible in the way his knuckles have gone white wrapped around John.

Shifting the taller man with a careful roll of his undamaged shoulder (more guilty than amused by the startled little flinch Sherlock gives at being disturbed), he reaches out with one hand to undo the belt on the sleep robe Sherlock is wearing, stops when Sherlock mumbles a protest and then says, “stop” when it comes again. “Stop,” he repeats, and Sherlock jerks but mostly obeys, only heaving a tortured vocalization when John works the sleeve off one arm and tries to adjust himself, tries to get as comfortable as possible.

“Spoiled,” John feels the need to say but his decision's been made so that's that, he folds Sherlock up as well as he can against him, makes sure all of him including his feet are curled up under the half-undone robe— “ _Christ_ , you're an icicle,” he whispers as fingers slip under his shirt again, how can someone be so cold, good god, it should be impossible— “You keep your feet away from me,” John snaps (and doesn't think about all of the things that come with the words, all of the promises and all of the chaos and all of the next however long it's going to take to fit this into the shape it should be in and it's worth it, yes, but they're both— _upset_ ) and Sherlock is suspiciously quiet, head tucked low between his shoulders, as if promising that John has nothing to worry about, he'd never slip into bed with cold feet and give John a heart attack, he is incapable of such inhumane action against _anyone_ especially _John_.

The twitching doesn't come again, and minutes tick by, slide away and are replaced, and Sherlock is quiet against him, and loose against him, and after some time he presses reverent words into John's shoulder, strokes a little at the skin of John's back and finally eases off into a startlingly deep sleep.

So John swallows the words down, buries them.

They can try to dig them out later.

Later, after the morning passes.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Anthea cleans the kitchen without being asked.

It allows Mary to stretch out on her couch with a pair of half-done socks between her fingers, eyes lifting every so often to study the girl across the short distance that separates them. Except that she is a woman now, and a gifted one, and yet has been with that boy for a good two years and seems to be quite taken with him. “You know everything, of course.”

“I'm only here for the food,” Anthea denies in a singsong tone, now drying Mary's plates and pans and flatware, “and it's classified for me anyway. Your work always is.”

Mary takes a sip of the tea Anthea had brought with her as well, considers how quickly Anthea memorizes what she manages to absorb. “He's nothing, he doesn't _mean_ anything.”

“Not my business,” Anthea reminds her carefully and Mary heaves a sigh, is forced to undo the last five stitches in order to redo them, to keep the tension even. This is what people mean when they speak of family connections, and it's quite unlike anything she's ever felt and no matter how much time passes, it never goes _away_.

No wonder John surrounds himself with those he loves while keeping himself (surprisingly successfully) emotionally distant when they attempt to return the favor. The ex-sister-in-law and the officer, they get closest, and it's telling, really, that he lets the women in just a bit.

“He's my business anyway.”

“Yes, of course.”

Mary pauses mid-stitch, frowns. “Don't patronize me.”

“Perish the thought,” Anthea promises much too gently.

And the last few years haven't changed very much at all, she's still waiting and resting, listening and watching, and it all feels the same whether she's in a class or behind a rifle, everything is always the same, there is (almost) nothing beyond the flatness inside that is all she can remember as far as she looks into her own heart.

It pumps, it works, and she blends in easily, her father's eccentricities had taught her so beautifully, so harshly, how important it was to slip between and blend in and fit, and it only needs to pump anyway, and she loves John much more than she ever thought herself capable to feel such a thing (beyond Anthea, beyond _I need you with me always, girl, don't you understand?_ ) and he is a bubble of warmth inside her but she doesn't need him very much at all, he's not replaceable, exactly, there's only one John in the world but she doesn't need him.

Mary doesn't really seem to need anyone at all, she's found, not even—

Never mind.

“Waste of my time,” she mutters and in a fit of emotion tosses the socks onto the table. Off Anthea's guarded little glance, the way the younger woman wavers curiously— “What?”

“You always said you hate running around.”

“It's my usual choice but never my preferred option,” Mary agrees as she finishes the cup and stands, heads for the kitchen. “All of the running and jumping and excitement, I'd rather... work on that cardigan, honestly— when was the last time you wore the wine-colored one, it looks so nice on you—”

A little crease at the corner of Anthea's mouth, a glint of smothered amusement. “I wear it all the time— at work,” she stresses when Mary tosses her a little squint, suspicion lighting her face. “All the time,” she promises urgently and Mary huffs, pausing in her search for a bottle of something alcoholic, “you know how cold he keeps the office.”

“Iceman,” Mary mutters, “such a freak, I thought I was going to die the first few times I was stuck in there, lost the feeling in my fingers the first time, thank god it got better when he started losing all the extra weight, god—” A choked sound from Anthea, and Mary grins despite herself, deciding on the nearly full bottle of brandy. “I can't wait for summer.”

“I never got that hat you promised last fall—”

Anthea smiles innocently at her startled glance and for a moment Mary is overcome with emotion, remembers when this girl had been nothing but the homeless girl with the impressive school records, remembers the first bouts of rapid internal growth that this girl had caused. “I haven't found the right yarn yet,” she finally snaps, and pointedly refuses to meet Anthea's eyes. “It's just... still on my list of projects, that's all—”

“What did you want to be when you were little?”

And Mary stops, stops mid-move and mid-step and mid-beat of her heart, and grounds herself and stares for a long time at the wall blank of family pictures.

It's a step beyond the rules that Mary applies to all of her students but so is the rest of this connection between them, so are the little gifts they still exchange privately on birthdays and Christmases, so was the trip to Asia when Anthea had graduated, so are the meals when Anthea has a reason to come over and nudge right into her life—

So Mary asks simply, “Before or after my father told me what little girls could and couldn't do when they grew up?” and flexes fingers against the glass and waits—

“Both.”

Mary speaks these words easily, calmly, remembers sharing this truth of herself with only one other, remembers feeling something inside her become _real_ in a way she had not expected once this part of her had suddenly become known. “When I was little, very little, I wanted to go into the army and be a sniper in the trees because I had decided that would give me permission to do whatever I wanted. Then Father told me that the army wasn't a place for little girls,” ( _you can't have it, not you, but look close and learn what I teach you anyway_ ) “and I decided I would be a secretary, and I'd know what everybody was doing and that seemed like it would be fun,” and there's that noise again, Anthea hurriedly stifling her little laugh, and this moment is real too, is flesh and blood and feelings. And so Mary finishes too quickly, rushing the words out of her throat: “Then I killed my father and realized I could be and do whatever I wanted.”

The answer is so simple.

She is so simple.

 

-

_Next: People have opinions. John runs, and trips, and runs some more. There's also a dead body._


End file.
